Particularly disappointing were “conservative” commentators and showboating politicians who appeared every bit as immersed in the Big Media bubble that they accuse their “liberal” counterparts of inhabiting.—JACK KERWICK

As everyone who cares now knows, the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that was held this past Saturday “turned violent.”

Of course, it is only within the fantasyland of the Fake News media that any of these rightist (or pseudo-rightist) events “turned violent.” The latter is one of the many stock phrases that Fake Media trots out whenever it is leftist “counter-demonstrators”—another of its terms of choice—crash the events in question with every intention of stopping them by whichever means necessary.

The happenings that unfolded in Charlottesville on Saturday fall all too neatly into a pattern stretching back for the better part of two years, a pattern that has become nearly an ironclad law.

Listening to the coverage of Charlottesville, one could be forgiven for thinking that those in Big Media, whether “liberal” or “conservative,” were oblivious to the existence of this phenomenon. Commentators struck the unprejudiced observer as either scandalously ignorant or just as scandalously (but predictably) dishonest. Particularly disappointing were “conservative” commentators and showboating politicians who appeared every bit as immersed in the Big Media bubble that they accuse their “liberal” counterparts of inhabiting.

First, while there were indeed some self-styled neo-Nazis that were present among the rally’s attendees, they were, by all appearances, a tiny minority. And they constituted a far smaller fraction of the totality of the group than, say, that which on multiple occasions comprised the totality of Black Lives Matter demonstrators that marched through busy city streets shouting such murderous slogans as, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” and “Pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon!”

Second, the Charlottesville demonstrators organized their rally months in advance of its occurrence. Their application for a permit to march was initially denied. To its eternal credit, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a left-leaning organization, came to the organizers’ defense and helped them to appeal this decision. A federal judge eventually ruled that it was illegal for the city of Charlottesville and the state of Virginia to prevent people from exercising their Constitutional right to peacefully assemble.

And this is a crucial point: Those in attendance at the “United the Right” rally did peacefully assemble. They had speakers lined up to speak at Emancipation Park (formerly known as Lee Park).

Hordes of “Anti-fascist” (Antifa) and “Black Lives Matter” agitators assembled to “bash the fash.” As always, it is they who initiated the violence. Even the Washington Post admits that it was the fear of leftist violence that provoked Governor Terry McCauliffe’s State of Emergency. Yet it was this move legitimizing the “Heckler’s Veto” that rendered a lawful event unlawful.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

Third, but even then, it wasn’t the rally attendees whose rally was being sabotaged who unleashed the violence. According to reports of those who were on the ground, police turned violent upon some of those who, evidently shocked upon hearing that before things even began they were ended, didn’t leave the area as quickly as the officers—and their superiors—would have preferred. The boys in blue sprayed mace at rally-goers and kicked them.

Then, the police, upon breaking up the group, redirected them out of the park through the sea of Antifa and BLM terrorists who proceeded to besiege them with an arsenal of weaponry, from bricks and bottles filled with cement to baseball bats, bows and arrows, urine, feces, bear mace, and—this is no lie—a “makeshift flame thrower from a spray can.”

A flamethrower.

Fourth, a life was indeed lost on Saturday. A counter-demonstrator was killed when someone who was allegedly one of the demonstrators plowed his car into a mob that had filled the street. The suspect has since been identified as James Alex Fields, a 20 year-old white man from Ohio. About 19 or so others were also injured.

This is the one event of the day on which the media have fixated. No doubt, it was the most serious of events, given that a person was killed. But insofar as it is abstracted and isolated from the context of violence that, to repeat, the Antifa and BLMers had been unleashing long before it happened, it is Fake News in the extreme, a tactic by which the day’s violence can be dropped exclusively upon the shoulders of those who exhaustively pursued legal measures to express themselves.

Confessedly, when I initially heard that “counter-demonstrators” had been struck, I immediately assumed that the motorist’s car was surrounded and his life imminently imperiled. This was the most reasonable assumption given that Antifa and BLM regularlyblockthoroughfares and subject to violence those who they regard as “fascist” and “racist.”

If the driver is guilty of malice, then, being the proponent of capital punishment that I am, I submit that Fields will deserve nothing less than death for his crime. Yet there is evidence that my initial suspicion is correct. Although he is being blasted as a homicidal neo-Nazi, what we do know for sure of Fields is that he was an active duty service member of the United States Army. Until Saturday, he worked in law enforcement as a security officer, and he has no history of violence.

And, according to a writer for the The Hill, those Charlottesville police officers who she spoke with think that Fields may have not acted with malice, but from fear for his life. Video seems to show a pedestrian hitting Fields’ car with a bat.

The point, though, is that no one knows for sure, at this point, all that happened.

Yet none of the moral exhibitionists who unleashed the tsunami of denunciations of the “white supremacists” (there were some unsavory characters in attendance, to be sure, but many present, and certainly the event’s organizers, explicitly disavow this moniker), uttered a peep concerning the brutality of those who started the violence.

Mike Cernovich, a Jew who reportedly declined an invitation to speak at the Charlottesville rally, reminded his followers this weekend of when he attended a White House press briefing some months back and called out leftist journalists for refusing to disavow Antifa. They still refuse to do so.

Nor do they dare to wax indignant over the violence of BLM.

To those who object to any of my assertions, I challenge you to present the video footage of “white supremacists” initiating violence against the thousands of masked agitators who came to greet them with weapons. In this day and age, when everyone has a camera, it shouldn’t be hard to find—if it exists.

That there are plenty of reasons for objecting to both this rally and the ideology that is associated with it is grist for another mill. The purpose here is to establish that the consensus among the “respectable” folks that “white supremacists” are responsible for the bloodshed in Charlottesville while the “counter-demonstrators” are victims or bystanders is a Gargantuan Lie that every lover of truth, decency, and, yes, Constitutional liberty must expose for what it is.

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Beliefnet columnist Jack Kerwick has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master’s degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. He teaches philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.

“What about the ‘alt-left’ that came charging them? Excuse me. What about the alt-left that came charging at the — as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? … Let me ask you this. What about the fact they came charging — that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.”

“I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people watched it. And you have — you had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now. You had a group — you had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit, and they were very, very violent.”

“Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.”

“So this week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you all — you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

“You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible. And it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You’ve just called them the left — that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.”

“Well, I do think there’s blame — yes, I think there’s blame on both sides. You look at — you look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either. … But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. … You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”

“Are we going to take down the statue (of Jefferson)? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue? So you know what? It’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.”

“George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So, will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down — excuse me — are we going to take down — are we going to take down statues to George Washington?”

“And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You’ve got — you had a lot of bad — you had a lot of bad people in the other group.”

Violent antifa/Marxist/BlackLM demonstrators have just destroyed the Confederate Memorial in Durham (the most leftist city in NC) and are now marching on the police department. Yeah, these are those “peaceful” demonstrators who oppose “hate.” Now, such monuments are protected by state law, and those “peaceful demonstrators” have committed a felony. Let’s just see if the leftist authorities in Durham will prosecute them !!!!

Who will condemn this hate and extremism? Steve Hayes or the Kraut? You want to bet money?

Fox News has become the “Voice of Leon Trotsky Unmasked.”
As we say down here, “the Leopard can’t change his spots.” The Neocons are revealing their quintessential, revolutionary progressivism, and it is foul, ugly, and bestial.

Maybe Kimberley G-String or Dana Perino will defend what’s right?

A note to the “police,” who took an oath to protect us: “We were just following orders” is not an excuse for dereliction of duty.

UPDATE (8:30 Eastern Daylight Time): Sources close to law enforcement tell me a crowd of angry demonstrators was forming on the South side of the Confederate Cemetery on State Street, Raleigh. He said he didn’t know their intentions but plans to break it up as they are in the street. Let’s see.

Police: 'We'll not intervene until given command to do so.' Since when is 'We were only following orders' an excuse for dereliction of duty? https://t.co/xVpnJOImPK

… the only voice that got even remotely close to a rational perspective came from Professor Carol Swain, who distinguished between the very legitimate desires, aspirations and fears of America’s under-attack white majority and the misapprehension that somehow those desires equal inevitably “white racism” or “white supremacy”
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Yesterday, until late at night, the media was filled to overflowing with nothing but lurid and hysterical accounts of the “violence” and the “massacre” by so-called “white nationalists” (alternately identified as “white supremacists” or “white racists”) of those poor, innocent “counter demonstrators” in Charlottesville who were “protesting hate and bigotry.”

That’s it; that’s the narrative that showed up, overpowering everything else, including wall-to-wall coverage on Fox, and spewed forth as if handed down from Mount Olympus by assorted “wise” Republican senators, including most notably—and disgustingly–Marco Rubio, Orrin Hatch, and—of course—John McCain, whose biggest complaint was that Donald Trump somehow did not specify that the violence was exclusively caused by something that is termed the “Alt-right.”

Nary a word about the ultimate and real responsibility of the American Left for a continuing history of violence, nary a word about the responsibility of the so-called “resist Trump” organizations and their actions, nary a word about the uncontrolled rampaging of the Black Lives Matter movement (e.g., Ferguson, Baltimore, etc.), nary a word about the stepped up and planned confrontations by the “antifa” (self-titled “antifascists”) militants. That is, not one word about the history of virulent street action, fire bombing, trashing of private property, and, yes, attempts to kill anyone (e.g., Representative Steve Scalise) to the perceived right of, say, John McCain, anyone who might in any way say a good word about Donald Trump, or defend older American traditions and beliefs.

So, continually, the networks portray what happened yesterday as simply the manifestation of extremism and bigotry from the Right. And practically the only voice that got even remotely close to a rational perspective came from a black professor, Professor Carol Swain at Vanderbilt University, who distinguished between the very legitimate desires, aspirations and fears of America’s under-attack white majority and the misapprehension that somehow those desires equal inevitably “white racism” or “white supremacy.”

As Swain indicated, what has happened during the past few decades is a palpable marginalization of millions of hard working Americans, mostly white and mostly Christian, who have been sidelined and left behind by the advancing progressivist revolution (these last words are mine). They are not naturally “racists” or even “white supremacists,” but rather they seek to guarantee their own survival, and the survival of their families, their communities, and their culture. They have seen the standards, beliefs, traditions, morality and customs that they inherited and have cherished—they have seen them attacked, ridiculed, and, in many cases, banned, even criminalized.

The so-called “Alt-right” march and their demonstration in Charlottesville, then, must be seen as something of a predictable boiling over of that legitimate and simmering sentiment. Protesting the attempt to take down the historic Robert E. Lee statue was not, in this sense, the underlying reason for the Alt-right protest. Rather, it served as a much broader, if much angrier and extreme, reminder of what is and has been occurring in our society, a symbol of the continuing destruction of this nation and its history by those who zealously possess and attempt to impose a world view, a template, which is the antithesis of those beliefs and that faith that millions of us have inherited and which we hold dear and believe.

The attacks by nearly the entirety of the media—including notably Fox—on the “Alt-right” demonstrators as “white racists” and “white supremacists,” then, is not only misguided scattershot, but it partakes in the dominant and ideologically leftist Deep State establishment narrative which posits as absolute truth that “hate,” “bigotry,” “racism,” ad nauseum, only come from what they identity as the “far” or “extreme” right. And those terms are all-inclusive for anyone who dissents even in the slightest from the ongoing progressivist Revolution.

Thus, when the president condemned violence from “both sides,” it was as if Mount Vesuvius had erupted and had poured down its ash and lava all over Pompei! The Mainstream Media went literally wild in outrage and demanded that he specify by name the “right” and “rightist violence.” And in jumped with both feet the obsequiously sickening Marco Rubio and Karl Rove, obedient to the standard Deep State mindset, urging the president to condemn “white nationalism” and “white supremacy.”

And so it went throughout the afternoon and evening … until I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and switched over to watch John Wayne in John Ford’s 1950 film masterpiece, “Rio Grande.” (It is always a gracious reward at the end to hear the Yankee band strike up “Dixie” as the Union troops pass in review!)

Certainly, the Alt-right demonstrators in Charlottesville included some extreme elements. Certainly, a few would advocate a form of “supremacy,” or rather a return to a time when white people had more authority in this nation. And, yes, they were very angry—angry after watching the dozens of violent manifestations by those revolutionaries of the Left, those “resisters” and “antifa” Marxists and Anarchists, those rampaging Black Lives Matter zealots for whom any law enforcement action against any black person is, ipso facto, “racist” and “police brutality,” legitimizing their burning out of whole neighborhoods in Baltimore and Ferguson. And, yes, driving a car murderously into the assembled counter-demonstrators, however much provocation there may have been, was unjustified and counter-productive and criminal.

All of this was predictable and even perhaps inevitable, given what has happened in the country. Indeed, is it not a product of the over-the-top rhetoric, the apocalyptic imagery and the violent reaction from the forces and minions of the Deep State managerial establishment to last year’s election and any attempt to reverse their jealously-guarded domination over us all?

For far too long those—we—middle Americans, we “deplorables,” oppressed and suppressed by an increasingly revolutionary, radically multiculturalist, culturally Marxist overlay that drains out our historic being and essence as a people, have pacifically and more or less obediently acceded to the Revolution and its infectious cancer. Beginning last November, but actually before that, that slumber was interrupted, and millions of citizens, understanding, if intuitively, that their lives and their country were slipping away from their control, stood up and cried: “No further!”

And the dominant forces in our culture have responded furiously. At first those of us who wish to defend our traditions and our historic Western Christian culture sought to meet their assault traditionally, within the accustomed methods and pathways of our republic. But it was they—the forces of the increasingly hysterical Deep State and their stormtrooper antifa street fighters, the Black Lives Matter and its fatuous race hustlers like William Barber, the radicalized and demented university students, and not just them, but the near totality of the Democrat Party and most establishment Republicans, all fatally infected by a Revolutionary progressivist venom—they who first unleashed the violence in words AND in deeds.

Ironically, it is Robert E. Lee who defiantly stands for what was and is admirable and right about America. And his lesson is being lost through all that is currently occurring. A man who despised slavery and freed his slaves (in 1862), a man descended from the Founders of our old Republic and who fully understood what the Founders intended, a man who loved the Union but loved liberty more, a man of a truly Christian and gentle disposition—Lee stands out in our history as one of our greatest figures, respected and deeply admired by such diverse leaders as Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Yet, he also comprehended what the tyranny of an overreaching Federal government might mean. And he made a momentous decision to stand with his state AND with the American Constitution. In a real sense, he stood 155 years ago against the incipient progressivist Revolution, and despite overwhelming odds, he almost succeeded in leading the Confederate nation against that revolution.

Rather than recur then to some grab-bag terminology the media calls the “Alt-right”—which has yet to be accurately defined and described, other than becoming a “devil” term for the minions of the Deep State—those of us, those deplorables, those who awakened from a silent slumber last November, those of us who wish only to reclaim the right of our people, our culture, our civilization to survive and continue unmolested—we should look to the model of that “chevalier sans peur,” that noble Virginian, Robert E. Lee, who tried to preserve the American confederation, but also understood that there are times when one must, regretfully and painfully, take bolder steps to save that which is admirable and laudable in our history and our culture.

Dr. Boyd D. Cathey

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~ DR. BOYD D. CATHEY is an Unz Review columnist, as well as a Barely a Blog contributor, whose work is easily located on this site under the “BAB’s A List” search category. Dr. Cathey earned an MA in history at the University of Virginia (as a Thomas Jefferson Fellow), and as a Richard M Weaver Fellow earned his doctorate in history and political philosophy at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. After additional studies in theology and philosophy in Switzerland, he taught in Argentina and Connecticut before returning to North Carolina. He was State Registrar of the North Carolina State Archives before retiring in 2011. He writes for The Unz Review, The Abbeville Institute, Confederate Veteran magazine, The Remnant, and other publications in the United States and Europe on a variety of topics, including politics, social and religious questions, film, and music.